sure sitting down was safe. “That would be an awfully elaborate ruse, don’t you think? Just to keep me from knowing she was married before? Besides, she doesn’t have any friends in Australia.”
“Well, maybe a professional contact, or a business associate.” Hannibal said. Then he froze in place staring right past Mark. The word professional had done it. A memory jumped into his mind. The only papers he found in Oscar’s bedroom were airline ticket stubs, neatly folded in the table beside his bed. In the last year, he’d flown to Canada, Japan, Russia and yes, Australia.
Hannibal lifted the yearbook onto the counter and stared down at it. “Oscar Peters was there,” he said. “Oscar, her employee. She knew him when he was just a kid, way back in Germany.”
“Really?” Mark moved back into the kitchen and reached for the refrigerator, but the book Hannibal had just put down drew his attention.
“Yeah, they went back that far. He did this for her, to deceive both you and her uncle about her having been married previously.” Hannibal opened the book and began slowly flipping the pages.
“Do you really think that was a secret worth killing for?” Mark asked, sounding uncertain for the first time. “Could she have done such a thing?”
Hannibal kept the pages turning slowly, staring down at a time most of us remember as being more innocent. “He was a real person Mark. A human being, with a past, and hopes and dreams just like the rest of us. It’s hard to avoid the fact that Joan is connected with his death.” Then he looked up. “Where is she, Mark?”
Hannibal turned the book upside down and Mark stared down into it as if hypnotized by the moving pages. Learning so much so quickly about his new bride had drained all the fight out of him. “I heard her say something about going to see Gil Donner today.”
Hannibal turned the book back around to face himself. “Wonder how she knows Gil,” he said. “Any ideas?” He had fanned past the general crowd scenes and club photos to the glamorous poses of the senior class pictures. Right that minute he hated the world that turned some of those winsome faces into selfish, hate filled or dangerous people. Then his hand fell flat onto the page just under one of the pictures and he drew in a long, deep breath. She was very lovely back then, and now he knew her deep, blood tinged auburn hair was natural. Her skin was still as creamy and clear as it had been in high school, and her eyes were just as dark. As she looked up from the page at him his mind pulled the scattered threads of the case more tightly together around her.
“It would seem that Joan and Oscar go back even farther than I suspected.”
30
Within fifteen minutes Hannibal was turning off Route One into the little mini-suburb of hotels and office buildings just north of Alexandria called Crystal City. On the way, he had called Cindy to let her know he had the case all figured out. While pulling into the access road behind the Courtyard Marriott, he mentally walked through the likely scenarios of meeting Gil, Ruth and Joan together. He tried to predict who would say what, how each would react, and how he could best separate Ruth from the other two. He was convinced that Gil and Joan were conspirators involved in the three connected murders. Ruth, he thought, was an innocent and he needed to separate her from the rest.
He grabbed the yearbook, dropped change into the meter at the curb and walked around to the front of the hotel. He spotted Ray parked a few yards away. At least no one would go in or out unobserved.
Hannibal brushed past the uniformed doorman into the chrome and steel lobby, complete with conversation groups reminiscent of the gathering of faux living rooms one finds in large furniture stores. The elevators rose up transparent columns on the other side of the lobby, and he stalked toward them with resolve. He had a plan, but just before he reached the elevators, his plan was short-circuited by a woman calling his name.
He spun to see Ruth Peters on the nearest sofa. Her soft features beamed at him as if he were a long lost family member. The woman was woefully short of family, he thought, and he couldn’t simply walk past her even if he wanted to. Working to raise a smile, he went to her and sat opposite her on the facing couch. For a moment, it was as if he was visiting her in her own living room.
“Mrs. Peters, you’re looking well today. But why are you sitting out here in the lobby?”
She touched her bluish hair and Hannibal thought she might be a little embarrassed. “I was here visiting an old acquaintance, but he has company right now.”
Hannibal thought it time to cut through some of the smoke screen. “You’re here with Gil Donner, ma’am,” he said. “You know him because years ago he was provost marshal in Berlin and your husband’s boss. His visitor is Joan Kitteridge. I now know that she knew your son back in high school.” He laid the yearbook on the glass table that separated them. Ruth eyes flared in instant recognition.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, laying her gnarled hand on the cover as if it were her son’s body. “Did you take it from Oscar’s home?”
“Actually, your husband gave it to me when I went to Germany,” Hannibal said. “I should have given it to you right away, but I thought…”
He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence so she finished it for him. “You thought I’d want to know why Foster would part with it. That was kind of you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you fished it out of our trash. Foster can be a cold man.”
Hannibal reached forward to touch a bookmark sticking out just a bit at the top of the book. Ruth moved her hand and he opened the yearbook to the designated page. The room was dominated by the sounds of people rushing more than they needed to on their way to their next destination. Over that noise he heard Ruth’s small gasp.
“Yes, this is the woman upstairs,” Hannibal whispered. “Joan Kitteridge. She went to school with Oscar. More recently, she was his boss, at her own software company.”
“His boss. Her company.” Ruth spat out the words. “I knew that little tramp when she was young and dirt poor. Oscar even brought her home once or twice for a meal.”
“But then she married young, didn’t she?” Hannibal asked.
Ruth’s face reddened, making a sharp contrast to her blue tinted hair. “In Germany,” she said. “She was with him before she was even out of high school. But I understand he died in a training accident.”
Hannibal reached out to take the old woman’s right hand in both of his own. The hand was cold, but the veins on its back were a road map of the long and twisted trail she had taken through life. There were secrets buried so deep she could barely see them. He thought now was the time to dig them out.
“Mrs. Peters, I need for you to tell me what it is that ties Joan and her ex-husband to your husband and to Gil Donner. What connects them?”
Ruth released one loud sob and a tidal wave of tears spilled out of her eyes. She faced downward, her sorrow splashing onto Joan Kitteridge’s teenage face. “The murder,” she said.
Hannibal looked around but none of the travelers stopped to ask about, or even seemed to notice the old woman sobbing in the lobby. Still, he leaned closer to make it clear he was comforting her, and offered her his handkerchief. He couldn’t see how Gil Donner or Foster Peters figured in the death of Grant Edwards or Oscar’s more recent murder. One possibility remained. “Do you mean Carla Donner?”
Ruth nodded, holding the handkerchief to her nose. “Foster covered it all up to protect them. Oh, God, he covered up the murder and somehow, Oscar always suspected. He knew his father had done something wrong. That suspicion drove them apart.”
“You said protect them? The murderer and…”
“Gil,” she said, forcing words through her crying. “He was afraid if there was a real investigation everyone would know…” Hannibal waited for her to regain her breath. “They’d know she was with another man.”
Hannibal was rubbing her hand now, feeling her shake. “And somehow Joan knew about all this?”
This time when Ruth’s head started nodding it didn’t stop. “She must have known. Her husband was having an affair with Carla.”
31
